WHAT IS YOUR DATA WORTH?

Your answer will almost always be “less than it could be”. There may be a push at your organisation to understand data as an asset — even a desire to put it on the balance sheet! However, while it’s likely everyone feels like data should be important and valuable, it’s unlikely anyone has a clear idea of how that value can be maximised. Unlocking the value takes some skill and structure, but if you follow a well-travelled route it’s fairly straightforward to make solid progress. If you remember these four key things then you can guide your organisation to come up with a responsible answer.

#1: Skills of the team using a planned methodologyThe value of your data is directly related to the skills of the people that have access to it and the rigor of the process they use.

In the hands of “Steve” your data might be worth less than nothing or even actively hurting you, if he is butchering his analysis and giving everyone bad information. — Maybe Steve is accelerating your pain right now by automating and scaling his analytics in your business processes?

On the other hand, “Mary” is making your data sing and giving everyone actionable insights. — She is also automating smart decisions that are adding incremental value every time they’re used, but probably only a few people know it.

In my experience problems are amplified when organisations give analytical tasks to a single person rather than a team. If a single person is given an analytics project, there will inevitably be parts of the job they are not as skilled in or where they’ll be required to make assumptions. As a result, you get a sub-optimal and potentially harmful outcome. It is always better to have a proper planning process where teams with varied domain expertise and skills can design the solution to the problem – and then the technical people can go do the right work.

# 2: Data quality and availabilityOnce your data is of good quality and availability, the value of it is multiplied.

You’ve likely been frustrated with the pace of analytics in the past and been given a laundry list of reasons why it’s hard. Almost all delays and difficulties can be traced back to poor data quality/availability, or having it in the wrong structure for analysis. Data that is properly prepared can hugely accelerate the quality and speed of analysis, leading to increased confidence and use of analytics – a virtuous circle. Preparation means connecting disparate sets of useful data together in a central place and intentionally structuring them for analysis rather than operational use. Note the lack of a “Big Data” shout out here – the vast majority of value for most organisations is in the relatively small data of their operations and customer behaviours.

# 3: Identify great use casesYour organisational ability to identify great use cases for data analytics comes before building capability.

Almost all the organisations that build capability and then try to apply it fail, and for good reasons:

They didn’t understand what capability was going to deliver the most valuable results – it turns out they critically needed a screwdriver but ended up getting a bunch of hammers and now everything looks like a nail

While they built the team and got to grips with how to add value, the bills were piling up with nothing real to show for it - now the organisation demands results immediately, the best people leave, and the team flails around to prove they have worth

Instead, get experts to spend time identifying where the value in analytics is likely to be for your organisation and then build your team or outsource proof of concepts to gain confidence and value all along the way. Don’t focus on quick wins. Focus on wins that provide sustained value whether small or large. Focusing on quick wins leads to a scattered, uncoordinated mix of low value projects that keeps everyone busy but accomplishes very little. It gives people vested in the status quo plenty of ammunition to talk about how doing things differently doesn’t make a difference. In practice, this might mean over-investing in one or two people who are really good at identifying the best use cases for your organisation, but this multiplies the value of your data and the efforts of your team so is worth every cent. You’d be better off investing here first than in highly technical data analytics people or trying to find a single person who can do everything from identify the use cases through to doing and delivering the work.

#4: Ignore data monetisation for nowYou probably shouldn’t be worried about “datamonetisation” for a while.

The story is sexy and sounds something like this: data is weightless and costs nothing, but there’s huge value in it and high profit margins for selling it. However, you’re generally much better off focusing on extracting the value of your own data for you own organisation. For the reasons outlined above plus more (including the need for legal agreements and strenuous governance around sharing data), unless you are sophisticated as a business and making great use of your data already, your data monetisation outcome is likely to be poor to harmful. Typical outcomes we see when organisations with low internal sophistication do “high margin data sales” deals:

The internal team can’t deliver the data in a structure or timeframe that’s useful to a buyer

The buyer is more sophisticated than the seller and captures too much of the value chain

The seller doesn’t understand the external use cases for their data so vastly over-inflate their opinion of their data’s worth

However, there are a few data sets that have potential value to a wide variety of other organisations and lend themselves to data sharing and monetisation. The main ones are transactional banking data, telco location data, FMCG retail sales data, and large-scale loyalty programme data.

Summing Up To unlock the value of your data, focus on identifying great use cases and building out your data quality and analytics capability from there. Over invest in experts (internal or external) to help you do this because it will multiply the value of all your other activities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Datamine managing director Mike Parsons specialises in the development and implementation of comprehensive cross-organisational data strategies, and is a renowned ‘go to guy’ for C-suite executives looking for real world data advice. With over 20 years senior management experience, Mike works across the business — bringing deep industry experience in the banking, telco, energy, retail, FMCG, and insurance sectors.